Down Bad and Stuck in Delulu-land: A Case Study of Peter Walsh in Mrs. Dalloway
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Elliana Arnold (English Secondary Education, 2026)
"Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her theory worked to this extent. Brief, broken, often painful as their actual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions (this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt, handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the effect of them on his life was immeasurable. There was a mystery about it. You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain–the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of him when she saw blue hydrangeas). She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known. And always in this way coming before him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or English harvest. He saw her most often in the country, not in London. One scene after another at Bourton..."1 --Mrs. Dalloway, 149-150
In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the residue from Peter and Clarissa’s past romantic relationship lingers in Peter’s mind. Remembering only what Clarissa was like in their youth, Peter struggles with understanding Clarissa in her role now as Mrs. Richard Dalloway, trying and failing to grasp why she has chosen such a position. His perception of her proves to be faulty, for he partitions her character in order to fit her into his life and understanding. Peter separates his imagined idea of her from her actual person because he can only happily connect with her in memory and illusion rather than in the present reality. His myopic imagination exhibits his inability to think of her as the complex woman she is, separating contrasting aspects of her character instead of reconciling them to gain a better understanding of her intricate nature. Woolf depicts Peter Walsh as being unable to grasp and understand Clarissa Dalloway as an individual who exists independently of him with her own personality and desires. Peter is unable to truly love Clarissa for he feels pained by her actual, physical presence in his life and can only truly connect with her in her absence. Woolf uses Peter as a cautionary tale to warn how true connection fails when one attempts to fit another into their life without taking them as they truly are.
Peter experiences great frustration and annoyance when he encounters Clarissa in person, because these meetings make it harder for Peter to deny the fact that Clarissa has a present that no longer includes him. In retrospect, he describes his and Clarissa’s meetings as “brief, broken, often painful…sharp, acute, [and] uncomfortable.”2 In-person, Peter is confronted by the person Clarissa truly is: a society woman with her own family and aspirations, a person who does not match who he wants her to be. For instance, he is resentful and upset when Clarissa’s daughter Elizabeth interrupts them, describing the girl as “a long-legged colt, handsome, dumb.”3 In his dismissal of Clarissa’s daughter as a beautiful but mindless creature, not suggested by anything but his own aversion to the girl, he rejects a person whom Clarissa cares very much about, exhibiting his inability to understand her life as it is now, a life that is completely independent from his own. Clarissa loves her daughter; her thoughts repeatedly reflect her concern for her daughter’s upbringing and education. Elizabeth is the living embodiment of Clarissa’s decisions to marry Richard and to become a mother and society-woman, and for this reason, Peter cannot stand the girl, merely viewing her as an interruption, an impediment to his own relationship with Clarissa. In rejecting Elizabeth, he rejects Clarissa’s present and all the decisions she made along the way. He desires the Clarissa that he used to love before she married Richard; however, Clarissa has grown since their youth, building her own life with her own family.
While Clarissa’s presence confronts Peter with the painful truth, her absence allows Peter to embellish his faulty imagination. When Peter is away from her, his connection to her “would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding.”4 He uses the five senses to illustrate how he connects with her when she is not physically present; however, this experience demonstrates a disconnect between who Clarissa is in reality and who he desires her to be. He utilizes his senses, meant to perceive the physical world, to find Clarissa in his life, yet she is not physically there. This leads to the question of whether Peter is truly seeing her or just imagining her in his life. He pushes this idea even further by saying that she comes to him “on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things.”5 Peter experiences her abroad in places she has never been to and in things she has never even seen. His ‘love’ for her fits her into his own world, a world she has not been a part of for a long time. Throughout the novel, Woolf depicts Clarissa as someone who can see and feel herself in everything, even in the most simple parts of nature and domestic life; however, she finds herself in the little parts of her life. Peter only sees her in parts of his life, the part she has never actually physically experienced, causing the reader to question how well he actually knows her.
Peter experiences her abroad in places she has never been to and in things she has never even seen. His ‘love’ for her fits her into his own world, a world she has not been a part of for a long time.
In imagining Clarissa into his life, a place in which she no longer exists, Peter exerts full control over his perception of her and leads himself astray. He claims that he sees her “most often in the country; not in London,” illustrating how he chooses to imagine her where he would like and not where she actually exists–not where she chooses to exist.6 Peter fully disregards the life she has built for herself in London because he has not built a connection with her there. Both London and Clarissa remain strangers to him. Instead, “he saw her most often in the country,” imagining her in “one scene after another at Bourton,” the place of Clarissa’s childhood—the last place Peter could say he knew her.7 His reference to Bourton illustrates how Peter is stuck in the past, unable to keep up with Clarissa as she develops into the complex woman he meets in London. While Clarissa will always have her memories from Bourton, she is not confined to the person she was in her youth. She is both Bourton and London, a contrast that Peter refuses to reconcile just as he cannot bring together her physical reality with his imagined idea of her.
Clarissa exists as a fragmented person in Peter’s mind because he partitions her characteristics into more manageable pieces that are easier for him to understand in the context of his own life.
Clarissa exists as a fragmented person in Peter’s mind because he partitions her characteristics into more manageable pieces that are easier for him to understand in the context of his own life. She is full of contrasts and contradictions about who she loves, who she is, and who she wants to be, but those are all a part of her complex nature, something Peter cannot seem to grasp as he cuts her character up. For instance, when he describes how she comes to him, he says she is either “cool, lady-like, critical” or “ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or English harvest.”8 Peter thinks she must be one or the other, for he cannot fathom that she could be both, completely missing her dualistic character. He cannot reconcile contrasting ideas of her to achieve a more complex understanding, so he just keeps partitioning her: cold or romantic, real or imagined, Bourton or London.
Peter’s desire to fit Clarissa into his life leaves him unable to empathize enough to comprehend her complexity. He does not understand the duality and occasionally contrasting elements of her nature so he focuses on the parts that fit into his own life, simplifying her character into someone that does not exist. While Clarissa can find the unseen part of herself in other people and things in nature, giving herself up to others as she lives on in them, Peter only wants to find other people in himself, demanding that people fit into his world. However, Clarissa and Richard’s marriage illustrates how people are too complex to perfectly fit into another’s life unless both accept each other’s complexities, something Peter is unwilling to do. While Clarissa draws herself into community through empathy and a desire to understand, Peter pulls away from community by trying to force others into his life and his own understanding of the world. He does not realize that his inability to connect stems from a self-serving mindset that does not allow for taking the time to consider the perspectives and complex natures of others.
End Notes
1 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 149-150.
2 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 149.
3 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 149.
4 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 149.
5 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 149.
6 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 150.
7 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 150.
8 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 150.
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